PPH And Fen-Phen Leave Bitter Aftertaste Years Down the Road

Philadelphia, PAFen-Phen hasn't been on the market for some 15 years, but it remains at play in both the courts of the land and in the lives of those who embraced the combination of drugs to facilitate weight loss. Amongst the health problems associated with Fen-Phen is primary pulmonary hypertension, or PPH.

The two appetite suppressants that were combined to create Fen-Phen had been, in their separate and original identities, properly vetted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the combined products were never studied to determine potential side effects were the drugs taken together.

Attorney Kip Pretroff, alum of Kent State University who led the original legal battles against the manufacturer of Fen-Phen in the nineties, published a book earlier this year on the trials and tribulations of the massive undertaking.

Fen-Phen, according to Petroff, was "a brilliant combination," the author said recently in a television interview. "The problem is, it was never tested. To this day it's never been tested.

"[The drugs] didn't need to be approved because they were both approved individually," Petroff continues. "Putting them together is what allowed you to take it longer, which allowed the side effects to build.

"To put two drugs together like that and promote them, when they weren't tested together, is just conscionable."

Petroff's book, Battling Goliath: Inside a $22 Billion Legal Scandal references the amount of money Wyeth and its parent company, Pfizer Inc., set aside to settle lawsuits stemming from the Fen-Phen fallout.

Fen-Phen was originally pulled due to a plethora of reported deaths and injuries involving heart valve damage. However, a more recent concern involves PPH and Fen-Phen. Many former Fen-Phen users are experiencing primary pulmonary hypertension that they allege goes back to their days on Fen-Phen.

Pfizer attempted to have such claims, often grounded in a Fen-Phen lawsuit, tossed out of court. However in late August of this year US District Court Judge Harvey Bartle III rejected Pfizer's assertion that such claims were not based on reliable evidence that prior use of Fen-Phen could cause grievous lung problems years down the road.

In deference to Pfizer the Judge, in a 22-page ruling held that there is, indeed sufficient evidence through studies to suggest that use of Fen-Phen pills a decade or more prior could potentially foster Fen-Phen side effects such as PPH years after stopping the drug.

Bloomberg News (8/30/12) summarized an April, 2004 court ruling by a state-court jury in Beaumont, Texas that awarded the family of a former Fen-Phen user more than $1 billion in damages. The Fen-Phen settlement broke out at $113 million in compensatory damages and $800 million in punitive damages against Wyeth, which has since been purchased by Pfizer.

Cynthia Cappel-Coffey died from Fen-Phen and PPH more than eight years ago. Judge Bartle's ruling clears the way for what is considered by most to be the last legal frontier for the decades-old Fen-Phen file. Among other Fen-Phen lawsuits are two cases in Philadelphia that are part of In re Diet Drugs Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1203, and Brown v. American Home Products Corp., 99-cv-20593, US District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).